I Can't Let Go.

I get fixated on subjects sometimes, and letting go is a process of perseveration followed by an almost physical separation of my thoughts from my brain.

Right now my family of origin is wedged, tight, into my psyche. If I could verbalize my thoughts, I suppose it might not take so long for the natural progression from thought to obsession then on to something manageable, but I can't speak with the ease of writing, and I'm a two-finger typist (guess which two fingers I use).

We were an almost silent family. Nobody spoke unless spoken to, and the lack of sound was deafening. When I was young, my mother was a screamer, but as we got older, and her alchoholism became complete, she stopped yelling, and communicated with her fists, belts, brooms, and in at least one case, a fireplace poker. She'd wreak havoc, then sleep, her rage spent, while we tried to make sense of a totally nonsensical world.

My father never raised his voice. He spoke in calm, clear, accented sentences. When he got mad, his voice lowered, and lowered again, until it was nearly impossible to hear what he was saying. It never really mattered what he was saying anyway, my father never believed in talking things through. Actions speak far, far louder than words, and there is no language that comes close to fist, leather, wood or metal on flesh.

We were not permitted to cry. We did, of course, when we were too young to know how to make the tears stop. Sometimes I think the psychological torture was far worse than the physical. I learned fast, my brother much more slowly, to remove all feeling from my body. That was the easy part. Cutting off feelings is literally a double-edged sword, the pain is deferred, but feeling anything at all becomes hard, sometimes impossible. I still almost never feel hunger, I ignore most pain, or only acknowledge it when things are dire, I have inappropriate responses to some situations, and as awful as they can be (laughing when someone is hurt, getting angry when someone is crying) I truly cannot change those reactions. For years I simply denied my own need for sleep, and now I take medication to supply me with the ability to get six hours of real rest. I spent so many years forcing myself to stay awake to protect my brother and myself that it became a habit to be awake for days and nights) at a time.

There was never enough of anything in our house, heat, food, money, love. If my mother cooked something, and there was too little to feed everyone, somebody didn't eat. That person was never one of my parents, and whomever went hungry on any given day was not allowed to leave the table until everyone else finished. My sister, brothers and I knew the rules, and followed them, to do otherwise was unthinkable. My brother was a skinny, scrawny little kid, whose head seemed far too large for his body. He was always hungry, he woke up every day and went to sleep every night with an ache in his belly. Trying to share food, save food or steal food could result in broken bones, but we both tried anyway.

To say that food and issues around food and eating still plague me is a gross understatement. I don't think I will ever have a normal, healthy relationship with food.

Chanukah, birthdays, any special occassions meant that someone would be left out. I am still far more comfortable with giving gifts than receiving them. There can never be too many gifts for those I love, it becomes critically important for me to not only find the right present, but enough presents.

It will get easier, I have faith in my partner, my family of choice and my doctor. I've already survived childhood, it can't get worse than that.

Can it?